


Pass By

by Senshi



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Drunk Sex, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Mutual Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 17:43:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18299054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senshi/pseuds/Senshi
Summary: Cloud wasn't in love with his college roommate/best friend.





	Pass By

Cloud had been waiting. Waiting for the inevitable, bracing himself for the end. Maybe since the start. The force of it somehow still ripped the pieces of his heart asunder when it came, snuck on him from the warmth of familiar blue eyes, clear and bright as the midday sun.

"The proposal went well. Wedding's set for next spring." It was hard for Cloud to ignore the giddy excitement in Zack's voice, the way he lit up the room, so bright Cloud wanted to look away. If only he wasn't still in love with the way the edges of Zack's lips curled up into that immaculate smile, the way he filled the edges of Cloud's broken heart with trembling, hopeless want that blinded his senses.

But love was supposedly blind, wasn't it?

"Congrats." Cloud managed to keep a firm grasp on the coffee mug he was holding, thanking some god or another that he hadn't been mid-sip when Zack came in. "I'm happy for you both." He shot Zack a quick smile before lifting the mug to his lips. "You two were meant for each other."

"Well you know what this means, then." Cloud felt a steady weight on his right shoulder, a familiar pressure from Zack's hand. "Be my best man?"

Cloud tilted his head back, lips leaving the hot rim of his mug as his gaze met Zack's, breath catching in his throat like it did the first time he set eyes on him. Every time was like the first time, and now more than ever, he found it difficult to keep the adoration from seeping into his voice. He'd had years of practice, though, so he kept it in.

"Of course."

 

* * *

 

 

It had been so long that Cloud no longer remembers the exact moment it happened. Maybe it was the dumb, innocent-looking grin Zack had sported that time he made Cloud burnt mac and cheese for his birthday, or maybe it was how Zack had no sense of privacy and went about their apartment without his shirt more often than not. Or it was the way he'd make Cloud coffee at 6 in the morning when only Zack's first class started at noon, the way his crushing hugs stole Cloud's breath, the way he ruffled Cloud's unruly hair and pulled down all his walls like they had never been there in the first place.

Maybe it was because it had always been there in the first place. But Cloud had caved. _Loved._ Ached like a lovelorn schoolboy, because he was—older now, but no wiser than the time he had crushes on celebrities and long silver-haired boy band members in high school.

Which made things a lot more complicated when he found his face shoved against the front of his roommate's blue denim jeans, the heavy scent of arousal filling his nostrils and mixing in with the heavy breath of his own inebriation. Cloud could have sworn they were at the bar less than an hour ago, with him playing the worst wingman to Zack's comical attempts at picking up girls until they had downed enough shots that they could barely stagger back home, and—

"P-Please..." _God_. Looking up, Cloud felt his own member twitch to attention at the darkened look in Zack's eyes. After a few minutes of fumbling with the zipper, he managed to tug the offending material down and was nearly smacked in the face with Zack's half-hard cock. _Breathe._ Cloud let out a barely-restrained moan, and clasps his hand around the base of Zack's arousal, hot, uneven breaths escaping him as lips hovered over the top of the head. He paused, for a split second, a moment of sobriety catching up with him. _Shouldn't be doing this. Shouldn't be_ this _with his best friend, his roommate, his crush. Lover?_

The hand in Cloud's hair tensed, and Cloud's thoughts ceased as he swallowed Zack whole.

Zack doesn't look Cloud in the eye for a week afterwards, but Cloud took that as a blessing, because he could hardly stand being in the same room as him either. It's not until next Friday, when Zack tumbles on the couch and pulls him in with the promise of movie night, that Cloud feels like things would be back to normal. As normal as things could be when Zack ends up three fingers deep in Cloud's ass a mere 45 minutes later, that was.

Cloud didn't mean to make it a habit, and he had a feeling that neither did Zack. It just happened. He'd catch Zack looking at him with a burning look in his eyes between hauling laundry downstairs, or insistent hands on his ass while he heated up leftover Thai on the stove. It was an arrangement, an unspoken condition—"We're friends, right?" Zack whispered as Cloud was still panting below him, legs yanked up and thighs straddling Zack's waist, the heat between them anything but friendly.

 _Friends_.

Zack didn't want him. Couldn't possibly. If not for the fact Zack had him pinned down with his legs wide open and ass open for the taking, Cloud might have laughed at his own naivety, his own stupidity, for even _thinking_ that Zack would have wanted him. Of course. Cloud was just a warm body to hold, a convenient fuck. So that's why Zack never put a label on it. That was why he always paused with a ponderous, lost look in his eyes before kissing him.

And Cloud couldn't care less.

Cloud ignored the ache in his chest in favor of letting Zack continue to fuck him into the cold countertop of their tiny galley kitchen, sloppy kisses trailing down his neck, already dense with bite marks from when Cloud had rode Zack in the back of his 2005 Toyota Camry just a week ago. A broken cry escaped him when Zack hit him in that one spot that made his vision go white, his thoughts blank out, and his heart forget (if only for a moment) that this wasn't the thing he had hoped for, that this couldn't possibly be what he wanted that drunken night months ago when he had so willingly let himself go.

"Fuck," Zack cursed, mouth pressed against Cloud's jaw. Cloud could only whimper in reply as those hips continued snapping back towards his sore ass, letting out a wet _smack_ every time. _Filthy. Good._ Cloud wouldn't have it any other way. He reached out to tug Zack's hips closer, fingernails digging into his best friend's side. Cloud could tell that Zack was close, so he tugged at the dark hair at the base of Zack's neck and pulled him in so their breaths intermixed, heavy against sweaty skin. He can convince himself that it's intimate. Intimate enough.

"Wait, Cloud I—" Zack's words were cut off by another breathless moan as Cloud clenched around him, savoring the burn and the fullness of Zack's cock in his ass.

"Kiss me," Cloud growled between shuddering, breathy moans. _Kiss me like you love me, as if you love me the way I—_

When Cloud woke up the next morning, rays of weak sunlight barely slipping in through cheap window blinds, he found himself leaning over and inspecting Zack's sleeping face. A small smile slipped onto his lips, and he brushed aside the spiky mess that was Zack's hair. If he closed his eyes, he could play this game of pretend just a little while longer. Cloud's breath grazed over Zack's mouth. He was selfish, perhaps, but he couldn't take what wasn't his to be taken in the first place.  

Zack's expression was more unreadable than ever as they joked over bagels half an hour later. Cloud would later think about how funny it was that he could swallow Zack's cock whole but still could never understand him from the inside out, what exactly was underneath that decimating smile.

 

* * *

 

 

It doesn't last. Tifa introduces Aerith to Zack during one of their workouts, and Cloud can't even find it in himself to be jealous, not when Zack was never his to be taken away from him anyway. It's easier to rebuild walls when he'd done it once already, he thinks to himself. When all of this is over.

Aerith is everything Cloud isn't, and he can tell that her jokes and her spirit lift Zack up more than Cloud ever could. Zack hangs onto her every word, every strange aphorism and now definitely spends more time in the arts building to see her at work than in the gym, and Cloud finds himself confined to the stillness of his own room more than ever. Things aren't necessarily awkward between himself and Zack, at least not while Cloud can hang onto "finals" as an excuse for his self-imposed exile. Their lease expires in under two months, anyway. He can hang on for that much longer.

Cloud's startled by a knock on his door, a firm but gentle _tap_ _tap_ that makes him nearly jump out of his squeaky second-hand swivel desk chair. "Cloud, are you in there?" Zack's voice comes to him, muffled and uneasy. Cloud contemplates pretending to be asleep, but then he realizes that Zack would have seen the light of his desk lamp via the bottom of the door. Fuck.

"You can come in." The door creaks open, and Zack strides in, two cold beers in hand and that same old smile on his face. Cloud still finds himself charmed despite it all. "I have finals in three days, you know," he begins to say, but Zack casually leans in and presses a finger to Cloud's lips as he places the beer on top of Cloud's textbook. The touch makes him flinch, and something—hurt? no, he must be tired and misread that—flickers across Zack's expression before a playful smirk overrides it.

"Nuh-uh. You've been holed up in here for a week. It's time I got you loosened up. I ordered pizza too. " The way Zack words that—and the way he pulls Cloud from his chair to the bed is treacherously suggestive, and Cloud can feel the effects of Zack's touch already in his quickened heartbeat. The dryness of his hands against his bare skin reminds Cloud of how he must have spent the day with Aerith, with the ceramics and helping her with her senior exhibit, and Cloud wonders if he really is just clay under Zack's hands—malleable, pliable, moldable. Used. He bites his bottom lip and shoves Zack's hands from his waist. Well, it's good that Zack finally found someone who was worth his time, at last.

"Don't do this sort of thing when you've got a girlfriend to look after now," he mutters, the subtle venom in his voice surprising even himself. "Fuck her if you're so eager to get a lay. I need to study." He turns back to his desk, unwilling to look at Zack. Forces himself to look away.

"Cloud, I—"

"I'm your _roommate_ and I'd like to study." Cloud picks up the beer, the cold glass nearly painful in its icy touch against his heated palms. "I'm glad you finally found someone who suits your tastes." He shoots Zack a weak smile, pushing the drinks back into Zack's arms. All things considered, at least Zack doesn't look hurt. Or so far that Cloud can tell. _Good_. "Sorry. Let's grab drinks together after I get through these finals." His mouth is dry, suddenly, and he swallows, gaze hitting the floor as he turns back to his desk. Why was this so hard? It's not as if they were a _thing_. This wasn't a breakup. They weren't even dating.

"Of course... sorry." The apology sounds hollow, like the rest of the charades they were going through. "Well, pizza's out in the kitchen whenever you feel like eating. Good luck with the essay, then." Cloud has his back to Zack, but he can feel how forced the words sound as he heard the door close, followed by receding footsteps. His memory flickers back to that night, and he curses himself for not stopping it in time. But he just had to fall for Zack, didn't he? It's his fault things ended up the way they were. So he's fixing it now, before it gets worse. He’s doing the right thing.

Things take a while to go back to normal, but when they do, Aerith and Zack are definitely dating, short of putting a ring on it. If there was anything there, it had long evaporated, though, Cloud still found himself haunted by occasional dreams of lively touches along his bare skin, and a familiar voice muttering sweet nothings into his neck—” _I, love you, I wish I could tell you”_ —before Cloud jolts awake, and reprimands his brain for coming up with false illusions. Cloud gets a text from Zack a year after Zack meets Aerith, as upbeat as ever, and he doesn’t find the strength to ignore it.

They go on a fishing trip in the mountains in the summer, and things go back to almost normal, save for how Cloud can’t help but want to reach out towards Zack’s sleeping bag at night, yearning for something he could not have.

-

 

The wedding's on a cruelly sunny and beautiful Saturday in April. Cloud, uncomfortably warm in his suit, raps twice on the door to Aerith's room, having been sent there by Tifa just minutes earlier. "Aerith? Tifa has something she wanted you to confirm downstairs. Said something about shoes."

“Oh? I’ll be right down.” There’s a rustling of fabric, and Cloud’s about to turn on his heels and get back to his task of memorizing his speech and ignoring every cell in this body screaming at him to run, to hide, to find a place where he doesn’t have to think about how this is the happiest day of Zack’s life but the worst in his own, how—

The door bursts open before he can even make it down the hallway, revealing an energetic Aerith in a light white dress, albeit slightly lopsided and her hair in somewhat disarray. She’d clearly still been getting ready. “Ah, Cloud, you’re looking handsome!” Aerith’s very presence is blooming, her voice full of the adoration and love that Cloud knows must be what drew Zack to her in the first place. “Tifa’s a lucky woman.” Her wink is sly, playful, and wickedly charming in a way that makes the pit of Cloud’s stomach drop to the floor. “Do you mind helping me with my dress for a moment? It won’t be long.”

“I doubt I’ll be of assistance,” Cloud begins to mutter, panic rising in him. _Shit._ “I’ll grab Tifa—”

“No, no, it’s really simple! Won’t take two minutes.” Aerith whisks him into her room (Cloud later realizes that it’s none other than the room she would be sharing with _Zack_ ) and he finds himself fiddling with the top couple of buttons on the back of her dress a few minutes later.

“You know, Zack’s been talking about having you as best man for _ever_ ,” Aerith murmurs, and Cloud can hear the smile in her voice. “Even before he proposed.” Cloud’s stomach does a flip, but he quickly calms himself back down with reason.

“I figure that it’s because we’ve known each other for so long. College roommates and all.” Cloud somehow manages to close the clasps of one of the buttons successfully, and he breathes a sigh of relief. _Four more to go._ “I just hope you two weren’t expecting too much from me for the speech.”

“I’m sure you’ll do just fine.” Aerith’s chuckle is heartwarming, and it tears at Cloud even more to hear it. “Zack has a lot of faith in you.”

“Oh.” Cloud’s fingers fumble and he curses as the small buttons escape his grasp again. Damn it, why couldn’t Aerith just have gotten Tifa to get this stuff done?

Silence falls on the two of them again until Cloud is just about finished pulling the last button into its clasp and feels Aerith’s shoulders suddenly tense up, as if she’d been holding her breath the whole time and only just then realized that she needed to breathe. “Cloud?”

“Yes?”

“You loved him, didn’t you?” Aerith’s voice is soft, imperceptibly gentle, a calm, steady wave across stormy undercurrents. Cloud flinches, pulling his hand back from Aerith’s dress on instinct as if it were fire and not linen and gauze. “You can tell me. I’m not angry. I just wanted to know.”

Cloud is silent, air escaping him in short, broken breaths.

She turns around, unfaltering and tranquil gaze meeting Cloud’s tumulous, fear-stricken stare. Cloud could have sworn her eyes held a measure of pity within. Didn’t want to think about it.

“You love him.”

Cloud turns away from her, like a child who had been caught with his foot in the wrong shoe. “Looks like you’re good to go, then. I’ll let Tifa know you need help with your hair.”

He doesn’t stay, even when he sees Aerith’s hand reaching out towards his wrist. He’s got a speech to prepare for. And when Zack greets him at the altar, a mere hour later, Cloud runs his hands along the spot on his waist Zack had rested his hand on when he pulled him into a hug, feeling like a sunflower who had just turned its face towards the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> zack was awake when cloud was trying to kiss him. oops.  
> i essentially tweeted too much about this au so i had to get this out of my system. (i think i should stick to drawing in the future, but whatever, i did it so it's here.)
> 
> i was thinking a lot about the concept of 擦肩而過 (to brush shoulders while passing by), and i think it's appropriate for clack in some ways; cloud and zack both have their own ways of communicating, and neither necessarily are good at figuring the other out. so, unrequited mutual pining.
> 
> thanks to my gf for beta testing this at like, the dead of morning


End file.
